The last month and a half (my son just turned 1) have just amazed me at how much he has learned in so little time. He absorbs things. I hadn’t taught him “gimme 5” so when people said: “gimme five!” he’d just look at them like: “what?” So I thought I better teach him and it took me 3 minutes and now he knows it and does it.

I am just wondering what other things I should be teaching my son.

I read to him, but he doesn’t seem interested and we can’t finish a book before he crawls off to do something else.

I talk to him a ton, we speak Swiss-German…(which I have to put on another post, because I have a question about that =)

but I was reading some books about …How to Teach Your Baby Math and I wanted to do that, but haven’t done it yet.

What do you homeschooling mothers do?
How early do you start “schooling”?

I plan on homeschooling my boy but I should be researching it already, and haven’t…there’s time…and I’m sure I’ll learn as I go…but anyways,

do you know any games to do with a 1 year old that are educational as well?

Hi! I think it’s awesome that you have taken such an interest in your baby’s learning curve. My boys are 4 1/2 and 1 1/2. Each night before we go to bed, I pick my 1 year old up and walk around the house and point to about 30 different objects and name them and tell them nighty-night. It goes something like…”Night-night clock, night-night microwave, night-night wall (have him touch the wall), night-night light (turn light off and on), night-night carpet, night-night tv, night-night stove, etc..” If you let him touch or point to each object you’d be amazed that about after a week they can point out all the objects when you say them. And then they are usually speaking the names of most of them soon after that. Sometimes I’ll do this with colors. About 18 months they can usually understand and remember colors, animal names, and start counting (if they hear it often enough…my 4 year old and I play hide and seek SO much that my youngest son was counting to 10 by the time he was 14 months old, although he doesn’t really quite yet understand the concept of counting he can regurgitate what we are saying!)
That is one thing I LOVE about homeschooling, I get to share all their learning experiences with them and there are NO limits! My 4 year old kept saying “teach me how to read mom” so after 3 months, he’s now reading! It’s so exciting!
Have fun with your baby and remember that every child learns differently and at a different pace. You’ll find that toddlers have a “thirst” for knowledge!
Good luck!
Heather

=)
Thanks! I am going to do the “night-night clock” game with my boy. I think he will love it. He already knows some animals, I am so excited to teach him things because he seems like he’s a genious! But we were all like this! It’s just amazing what a person can do when another person invests their time. I am really anjoying this.

Elisa,
Hi, I am new to this website, and just love it! I also have a one year old and just yesterday took a trip to Babys R us, to look at books for ideas of what I “should” be doing with my new little toddler.

I love the nighty night idea. We say nighty noght as my little man waves bye bye to some things in the house, but I never thought to use this little rouitine as a an opportunity to teach him names of objects!

I am a teacher and am almost finished with my Masters of Educational Administration K-12. Naturally, I am concerned like you and becaue I love teaching, expeically my own child, am so ambitious to teach my toddler, but worried as an educator I might push too much. I pray to our Lord each day that he wil just continue to bless me with the graces to know exactly how much or how little my on needs from me in terms of teaching things so early. Lord knows I often feel I do not know!

I personally feel as though as long as we are helping our children feel good about themselves and they are loving learning, there does not have to be a limit!

About a month ago, I contacted a good friend of my Moms who homeschooled four boys, all grown and raised now. I asked her, what should I be looking at, any literature – to aid me in homschooling my son some day, or any litrature to convince some of my family members that it is a great thing to do? She replied with suh a profuond response. She said Rachael, by all means it is great you want to homeschool and wonderful you love him so much you are thinking about this already, but honestly, you should be devoting your time and energies to wherever you and your son are at now, at this point in life. Live in the moment, do not be too worried about what you will need to do to prepar to homeschool, as yuo are already by nature yuor childs teacher. If you are the best mom you can be to your son, today in the present moment, then homeschooling will just be natural, pray for Christ to prpare yuor heart nd let him do the rest. Your instincts willl kick in, and he will lead you to whatever it is, and whenever it is you should homeschool your son “in”.

I was homeschooled in 9th grade becaue thre was not a local Catholic High School and loved it. However, some of my in-laws – with good reason because they care, are skeptical. In response to this concern of my Mothers friend said, you jst continue to be the best Mom you can be for your son, continue to let your family see what a great Mom you are, and let their confidence in you grow first, then they will naturally be confident you are making the right decision for him, and will support you!
Just wanted to share:)

Just another 2 cents. Have you tried Baby Sign Language? We used sign language with our second (I didn’t know anything about it until then 😳 ). It was so much fun! I started him when he was about 6 months or so and around 8-10 months he was signing with us (particularly MORE, DRINK and CANDY lol…the baby gym–used to take him to a parent-tot time class while eldest was in reg. gymnastics– lady got him hooked on putting more and candy together!! She was so fun!).

I know a couple of people who used it with their children because speech therapists recommended it, as well. Although, my son was never in need of that, we did it anyway. It was just a fun new way to communicate.

It isn’t wrong to expose young children to varied learning experiences, though! You’re on the right track!! Keep up the good work!

Editing this to add: We “home school” but never had a truly “official” start. As parents teaching our children about the world around them is just part of the job. We help them learn to use a spoon, learn to walk, play games, to me, reading, writing and mathematics aren’t too far removed from the other “basics” we, mothers, teach every day. Children learn as we communicate with them, read to them, play with them, etc. Of course, we adopt a more “formal” approach as the child matures, but, the fact that we are “teaching” never really changes.

Hey,
Yeah, we do sign language. I’ve been signing with him forever now, and he still rarely signs back. I’ve been doing “more” forever and he knows what it means but he won’t sign it back, he’ll just smile and wait for me to give him more.
I showed him “rain” yesterday and he imitated it. So, he’s starting to sign back a little, but not as much as I thought he would, by now. He’s 13 months, and I’ve been showing him signs at least since he was 6 months old.
But, it doesn’t even bother me that he doesn’t sign back too much. At least he understand exactly what I’m saying =)

On another note, I take him potty on the baby bjorn little potty every morning after he wakes up and he always poops and pees. Yesterday monring, he crawled out of bed (sleeps on a mattress on the floor) and crawled to the potty! YAY!! I haven’t had to change a poopy diaper in a while! I’m very excited abou this, since my friend’s almost 4 year old, is not even CLOSE to being potty trained. Wets the bed every night and poops in his pants sometimes during the day. =( Then again, it’s not the #1 priority on his mom’s list, she said she is too tired to take him potty at night.

Don’t worry about the signing or the potty training. It all comes together eventually. For me, I started my eldest out “early” with the potty training but he still ended up finished at 2.5 years, with my youngest, I waited until a little after he was 2 years and he still ended up finishing up with potty training at 2.5 years. I’ve heard boys tend to take a little longer from a physiological standpoint–girls really do mature faster in a lot of ways! We don’t have many “wee” accidents around here but my eldest has trouble with cyclic vomiting syndrome, so sometimes he tosses his cookies in his sleep w/o waking from time to time. We have a waterproof pad on the bed, but, WOW, that is one UNpleasant mess to clean up in the early hours of the morning. He can’t help it, though, I should know, I suffered from the same thing until I was a preteen. Looks like he’s on the same track as the rest of the family for cvs and migraines. The weird things we inherit, I swear! I scares us, though, because we fear he’ll choke. I usually hear him gurgling and get there in time to lift him up at least so it won’t aspirate into his lungs , but, I still worry.

Anyhow, I think exposure is the main thing and working with them every moment you can. Any “face time”, cuddle time or play time is a learning experience for little ones. Reading from early on is a good thing, too. I can’t remember when it was, exactly, that my kids liked them but as I recall, black and white board books with sharp contrast pictures REALLY got their attention. I think it was in the 6-12 month range? Nice, soft ,squishy fabric books have been popular around here, too. My youngest still falls asleep with his on occasion. 😀

Well, I have to take it back about my son not signing.
Yesterday and the day before he all of a sudden, out of nowhere started signing back everything I was signing him. Now he learns about 3 new signs every day! He’s just picking it up so fast! I guess all that signing “for nothing” paid off =)